But Ilitch embraced the city when it was unapologetically black; when its persona was embodied in its mayor — Coleman Alexander Young — who didn’t just remind people that Detroit was black, but lived and celebrated it every day, to the joy of many black residents and chagrin of many white businessmen who sojourned in the suburbs, waiting for Detroit to die.

Flash forward a few decades. Across the city, prominent black ministers, black sports stars, black developers — and two former mayors — all mourned Ilitch and praised him, saying the sports and pizza magnate, who died Feb. 10, didn’t get enough credit for starting Detroit’s renaissance — and while doing so, reaching out to black developers, artisans, ministers, leaders and future franchise owners in quiet, largely unprecedented ways.

Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, right, and Gov. John Engler shake the hands with Marian and Mike Ilitch during groundbreaking ceremonies at the site of the new Tigers stadium in Detroit, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 1997. (Photo: Carlos Osorio, Associated Press)

Much has been made of Detroit’s comeback through the eyes and aggressive development of billionaire Dan Gilbert, which has led to an influx of white residents, massive construction of expensive apartments and an increase in eating establishments that the late Free Press restaurant critic Sylvia Rector said has resulted in the most in the city’s history.

But the comeback didn’t begin a decade into the 21st Century with Gilbert’s purchase of nearly 100 downtown buildings and the recent migration of companies back downtown.

It began with Ilitch.

"Being a preacher, I love Mr. Gilbert and all that he’s doing for the city — and it seems never-ending,” said Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, senior pastor at Greater Grace Temple and one of the city’s most prominent ministers. “But somebody had to lay the foundation and create the platform for us to build on. And that was Mike Ilitch. Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ Before Dan Gilbert, Mike Ilitch was the ‘I am.’"

What about us?

Mike Ilitch’s death comes as Detroit grapples with the vital question of whether the city’s renaissance is leaving behind black residents languishing in neighborhoods and asking: What about us — the folks who were loyal to Detroit before it was popular?

Last spring, for the first time since Abraham Lincoln was elected president, Detroit was not one of the nation’s 20 largest cities. And its black population has dropped by more than a quarter-million people since 1990, according to the U.S. Census. Detroit’s black population also has dropped from 83% in 2006 to 79% in 2015.

Discussed incessantly in quiet conversations across the city — and expected to impact this year’s mayoral and city council races — is the question of equity and fairness as some black business owners complain of being replaced and longtime residents complain of being pushed out.

The death of Mr. I, as he was known, cements a changing of the guard, not just within his family, but within the city itself. And the biggest question I hear is this: Mike Ilitch helped saved Detroit by embracing black Detroit. Is that era over?

“I think had not the Ilitch family made the commitment they made to Detroit years and years ago under former Mayor Young, I don’t think a lot of other people would have followed,” former Mayor Dave Bing said. “It was hard for the Ilitch family, I’m sure, to take the kind of risk they did back when to invest in the city.

“You take Pete Karmanos (who moved his Compuware headquarters downtown),” Bing said. “I don’t think he would have come down here if the Ilitch family had not done it. Fast-forward and look at what Dan Gilbert is now doing. Mike was that guy 25, 30 years ago. We’re fortunate to have had people like them not afraid to take a risk on the city of Detroit. When we look at whether or not black folks are being shut out or left out, it’s too soon to say that because these things are just under development. But I think the Ilitches made a commitment that they would be inclusive and their history shows that they’ve done that up to this point.”

"In the mid to late ’80s, I was only a few years past my own pizza career (delivering out of my banged-up 1975 Camaro for Papa Romano’s in Southfield) and had just started my first “real” company (Rock Financial)," Gilbert told DBusiness magazine last November. "So I wasn’t nearly as familiar with the environment in downtown Detroit as I am today. ... In any significant sea change, it’s always hardest for the first mover to take the initiative. It becomes a little bit easier for the second guy to go, even easier for the third guy, and so on. That’s why momentum and consistent growth will always build the confidence of any marketplace. Who knows what would have happened had Mike Ilitch not moved Little Caesars to Detroit or made all of those subsequent investments over the years? Would Peter Karmanos and Compuware Corp. have come down in the early 2000s? Would we have come down if Mike and Peter had not made the leap before us? You can make a pretty good case that if Mike Ilitch and his family didn’t start the 'fire' almost 30 years ago, Detroit’s past, present and future would look very different."

“The bottom line for me: We simply can’t achieve success for our community without an expansive, inclusive team — employees, partners, friends and neighbors,” he said at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Detroit Policy Conference in his first public appearance since his father’s death.

In the neighborhoods, the percolating rancor is tempered by hope and a respect for what Mr. I did.

“I like Dan Gilbert for what he’s doing for Detroit,” he said. “People used to always say ‘When is somebody going to come and spend some money in the city and in the neighborhoods. Gilbert is that guy who did it. Some Detroiters were like ‘The invasion! He’s coming in and taking over.’ But long term, he’s put his money where his mouth is. He is reshaping the city. He’s got the whole city thinking Detroit is a great place. He told people he was going to build the tallest building in Detroit. That’s saying ‘This is my city. I believe in Detroit.’ Well, Ilitch paved the way for him.”

Partnerships with Young

It began with the Joe.

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In 1985, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young eats a slice of pizza at a fundraiser for the hungry in Detroit. It was sponsored by Little Caesars Pizza owned by Mike Ilitch.(Photo: Ira Rosenberg, Detroit Free Press)

After Mike Ilitch purchased the Detroit Red Wings in 1982 for $8 million, he pledged to keep them downtown at Joe Louis Arena, cementing one of many partnerships he had with Mayor Young.

The city “had no resources,” so he came in and painted it and put in merchandising and new concession stands, making Joe Louis one of the top facilities in the NHL,” said longtime friend Emmett Moten, who initially worked for Coleman Young, but later joined the Ilitch organization.

Ilitch “began to get more involved in everything going on in the city, whether it was trying to get Wendy’s to come into the city, which he did, or helping kids,” Moten said.

But Ilitch’s efforts were not limited to community service. He also helped boost some black developers who said their companies would not exist today had he not.

That included nurturing black developers and contractors.

“Mr. Ilitch had just purchased the Fox, and we were a new business, and we didn’t have any track record,” said Larry Brinker Sr. 59, CEO of the Brinker Group, a 28-year-old, 200-employee company.

They worked on that renovation and subsequently nearly every major project Ilitch took on.

Ilitch Holdings and Olympia Entertainment employ 23,000 full- and part-time employees worldwide. Company officials declined to release the percentage of employees of color, but said in a statement that their commitment to “creating opportunities for all Detroiters, and for the people of our region and state, has never been stronger.”

The Ilitch organization has 7,500 jobs in Detroit. About one-third of its Detroit-area employees are Detroit residents. And more than 60% of the contracts it has awarded — $391 million — have been awarded to Detroit-based businesses.

Critics will remind that some companies hired to build the Little Caesars Arena didn’t initially meet a required quota of Detroit jobs and were fined. But Olympia met its goal to hire Detroit residents in at least 51% of arena construction jobs — 50.9% of 23,675 labor hours at the site in the first three months of construction, according to city records.

Raising Detroit's stature

Ilitch’s partnerships with Coleman Young also included ways to raise Detroit’s stature. The pair worked with the late, legendary trainer and gym owner Emmanuel Steward to bring major boxing title fights to Detroit, which was at a disadvantage without a casino, Moten said.

Their first big victory? The 1984 Tommy Hearns-Luigi Minchillo super welterweight bout at the Joe.

“It was a leap of faith to do that, to see if people would show up,” Moten recalled. Only “6,000 people bought tickets, but 18,000 people showed up. It was unbelievable!”

When Ilitch purchased the Detroit Tigers — a decade after the Red Wings — he followed a similar plan for baseball, showing youth opportunities and promoting the heck out of the team.

Ilitch gave away 5,000 tickets to every game in the Tigers' inaugural season to raise interest among black residents, Moten said.

He also worked with local veterans whose small resource center was standing in the bigger footprint of the coming arena.

So Ilitch built the Pentagon.

That’s what members of the 28-year-old Michigan Veterans Foundation call their new 42,000-square-foot headquarters, which offers transitional housing for 104 people at a time and myriad other resources for former soldiers and their families.

“We couldn’t have asked for better,” said Tyrone Chatmon, a 64-year-old Vietnam vet.

The Ilitches helped sell the old building and lots and paid for the new building entirely, he said. “This is all the result of the kindness and generosity of Mike Ilitch and his entire team,” Chatmon said. “Our mission is to take care of those who take care of this great nation. … We watched the Pentagon and the arena go up simultaneously… Many of the things they have done, quite frankly, they did not have to do. And we’re so happy we pinch ourselves every day.”

Chatmon said he is not allowed to discuss what the building costs, but that the foundation would never have afforded it on its own.

“Our only wish was that Mike Ilitch himself could have made it here to see that the Pentagon went from concept to design to reality and now we’re living it,” he said. “Mr. I doesn’t do things for the accolades. It’s because it’s in his heart and his family is carrying on that tradition.”

Ilitch’s devotion to his native Detroit also meant something to black sports stars, who endured their own challenges playing in a predominantly white — and sometimes racist — industry.

Willie Horton, the star left fielder, said Ilitch’s concern for him lasted longer than his playing career.

“He got me back involved in baseball,” Horton said through tears, in an interview. “I thank God for the game of baseball and my association with Mr. Ilitch, not only as someone to work with, but someone who was like a father to me."

Horton said he learned his devotion to community from Ilitch and his other mentor, Judge Damon Keith. It was honed, he said, by an unofficial job that Ilitch gave him years ago.

“I used to walk down Woodward from my sister’s senior building” to Ilitch headquarters,” Horton said. “He wanted to know how the people were feeling in the community. I’d walk around the ballpark, just talking to people. He wanted people to be totally involved in the good that was happening. I just walked and talked to people in the neighborhood.

“I’ll never forget: I said, Mr. Ilitch, people feel left out, so we started creating things in the community," Horton recalled. "He was concerned about people being treated right. One thing he told me, and it stuck with me to this day. He said, ‘What’s the difference between you and a bum on the street? A chance.’ He said ‘God loves both of you.’ I was just more fortunate than a person on the street."

Horton said Ilitch made his family feel like it was a part of his.

“I look at downtown Detroit and I just thank God. It’s a blessing that this man moved his business downtown years ago and was involved in building Detroit back. There ain’t too many places I go that I don’t talk about Mr. Ilitch and his family.”

Horton said that in 2000, when the Tigers unveiled the his statue that overlooks right field, Ilitch asked him to come back and work for the Tigers. It was a hard decision, Horton said.

“Baseball is a beautiful game, but it’ll cut you open,” he said. “I got that out of my blood and promised my wife I’d never put her through that again. But I told her Mr. Ilitch wants me to get back involved.”

He came back.

Standing under that statue at the ceremony honoring its arrival, Horton overheard Ilitch praising someone.

That relationship over decades was the kind that Ilitch had with many black players, contractors, politicians and others. And in the days after his death, they wanted people to know that he made Detroit.

Moten said that Mike Ilitch didn’t move downtown to become the savior of Detroit. He came downtown to help the city he loved, and he did it when no one else would.

“When you look at that neighborhood today, he was the guy who put his foot down in that neighborhood and changed it," Moten said. "It was drug-infested and everything you can imagine, and he dealt with it. The homeless people who walked through the neighborhood? He took care of them.

"And during that period of time to today, there’s never been a broken window at the Fox Theatre," Moten said. "The reason was because the people in the community, they respected Mike Ilitch.”